TV Notebook: Raymond, Deshaies get tryout on radio

Inside pitch on baseball slated weekly on KBME

Published 5:30 am, Friday, September 26, 2008

Dave Raymond and Brett Dolan have been calling Astros games for three seasons, and yet I’m amazed by the number of people who still tell me they can’t tell the two apart.

Well, this may help. Starting Oct. 8, Raymond will be the one working alongside Jim Deshaies from 10 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays on KBME (790 AM) as host of what the two tentatively have titled J.D. and Dave’s Excellent Off-Season Adventure.

“We’ve been mulling over ideas for a slightly different show, and the guys at KBME are giving us a shot,” Raymond said. “The idea is to take our connections with the game and give sports radio a different look and feel.

“It won’t be a Hot Stove League show per se. We won’t be breaking down trade talk and player movement as much as telling fans a little more about the baseball business from our perspective.”

Raymond said the KBME show, which will air most Wednesdays through mid-February, will be his primary off-season project. Dolan, meanwhile, said he will try to continue picking up work on college football and basketball radio gigs until the 2009 season arrives.

As for the 2008 season, Raymond continues to shake his head at the unsettled state of the 2008 wild card contenders.

“Look at the teams ahead of (the Astros). They’re such disasters,” Raymond said. “They’re both under interim managers, and that’s usually no greater indication that they should be catchable. But (the Astros) ran into a spell of bad luck with the storm.”

If nothing else, Raymond will remember the 2008 stretch drive as providing the opportunity to call the first no-hitter of his big league broadcasting career, albeit it by Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano against the Astros.

“It was a strange day,” Raymond said. “We weren’t even in the home or visiting radio booth (at Miller Park). We were in an auxiliary booth down the third-base line.”

Back in Houston, meanwhile, Milo Hamilton endured Hurricane Ike without damage and is looking optimistically toward 2009 as the Astros awaiting their almost inevitable elimination from the 2008 wild card chase.

“If somebody had told you coming out of spring training, with our pitching staff as unsettled as it was, that this team would finish above .500 and be in the playoff picture into the final weekend, that this was a successful season,” Hamilton said.

“The bullpen turned out to be very good. Randy Wolf really helped, and you couldn’t have dreamed of getting what you got from Brian Moehler. Losing Carlos (Lee) was a body blow, but Ty Wigginton stepped up.”

Hamilton is less enthusiastic, alas, regarding the recent contributions of Lance Berkman.

“The way he started, you would have thought this would be a career year,” he said. “I think even his analysis would be that over the last six weeks or two months that he didn’t pull his share of the load.”

2009 will be Hamilton’s 25th season in Houston, and he said he continues to be enthusiastic about the task at hand.

“If I wasn’t, I couldn’t keep doing it,” he said.

Four DVRs, no waiting

Dick Enberg and Randy Cross will call Texans-Jaguars Sunday for CBS on KHOU (Channel 11). … Cowboys-Packers on NBC drew 22.2 million viewers Sunday, beating the Emmy Awards show on ABC with 12.3 million viewers. …

HBO says it remains on track for a Dec. 16 debut for Breaking the Huddle, its documentary on the integration of college football in the South. … Bob Costas’ extended conversations with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays is the topic of the next edition of Costas Now at 8 p.m. Tuesday on HBO. …

The Big 12 game distribution for Oct. 4 is Oklahoma-Baylor at 11:30 a.m. and Texas-Colorado at 6 p.m. on FSN, Missouri-Nebraska at 8 p.m. on ESPN, Kansas-Iowa State at 11:30 a.m. on Versus and Texas Tech-Kansas State at 2:30 p.m. on ABC. …

Before pooh-poohing the contribution of David Carr to the Texans, consider that the team is the most popular among NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers in Fresno, Calif., home of Carr’s college stomping grounds, according to DirecTV. The Titans are tops in San Antonio and the Redskins in Dallas-Fort Worth.